Jazz Composition Festival: Berklee Jazz Composers Workshop Orchestra with Christine Jensen

Renowned saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Christine Jensen joins the Berklee Jazz Composers Workshop Orchestra for a special performance showcasing original student compositions. As a leading voice in contemporary jazz composition, Jensen’s expressive playing and deep musicality will bring these new works to life. Each piece has been crafted specifically to feature her artistry, making this a unique collaboration between an acclaimed musician and the next generation of jazz composers.

 

Canadian saxophonist and composer Jensen has had a distinct voice in the creative jazz scene for the last 25 years with her large and small ensembles. She is set to release her third jazz orchestra album, Harbour, on Justin Time Records. It features her Montreal-based orchestra, along with guest soloists Ingrid Jensen on trumpet and electronics, Gary Versace on piano, Chet Doxas on tenor saxophone, Jon Wikan on drums, and Steve Raegele on guitar. This album captures over a decade of her compositions and commissions, with her sister’s improvisations infused throughout.

 

As a DownBeat Critics Poll winner for Rising Star Big Band, Arranger, and Soprano Saxophonist, she is constantly in motion as an improviser, composer, and bandleader. Her jazz orchestra recordings have gone on to win Juno awards, including Habitat (2014) and Treelines (2011). She was nominated for a 2024 Juno for her latest pandemic-inspired quartet album Day Moon (2023). She has been honored as a two-time recipient of SOCAN’s Hagood Hardy Jazz Composer Award. Habitat received the coveted five stars in DownBeat, along with Jazz Album of the Year. In 2017, Jensen was awarded the Prix Oscar Peterson from the Montreal International Jazz Festival for her exceptional contributions to jazz in Canada.

 

Jensen’s latest Montreal quartet released the Juno-nominated album Day Moon in 2023 to rave reviews. She also works with the quartet collective CODE with Montreal-based Jim Doxas, Adrian Vedady, and Lex French. They released Genealogy in 2020 and are set to release CODE-Red on Justin Time Records. She continues to collaborate in quintet settings with her sister, Ingrid Jensen, and their ensemble Infinitude featuring Ben Monder, along with Swedish composer and pianist Maggi Olin.

 

Jensen’s music has taken her all over the world through commissioning, performance, and conducting opportunities. In 2023 she was honored to conduct and arrange for the hr-Bigband with Mark Turner and his music. The Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra released the suite East Meets West in 2024, where Jensen was commissioned to compose as well as being featured on saxophone, along with Vancouver composer and conductor Jill Townsend. Over the past decade she has been an invited guest artist with Frost School of Music, the New School, University of Michigan, UMO Jazz Orchestra: Helsinki, Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, and Luxembourg Jazz Orchestra.

 

Jensen has performed with Jeremy Pelt, Phil Dwyer, Ben Monder, Gary Smulyan, Geoffrey Keezer, Lenny Pickett, Donny McCaslin, and Helen Sung, as well as directing Terrence Blanchard with the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal. She is founding artistic director and conductor of the Canadian National Jazz Orchestra, as well as the past artistic director of Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal., who commissioned and recorded her suite Under the Influence (2017), as well as her ever evolving project Equal=Orchestra (2022).

 

In 2022, Jensen joined the Eastman faculty as professor of jazz studies, where she teaches jazz composition and arranging, along with directing the award-winning Eastman Jazz Ensemble. She continues to work between Montreal and New York, where she has previously been on faculty at McGill University, Purchase College, University of Sherbrooke, and University of Montreal. Teachers and mentors include Kenny Werner, Jim McNeely, Dick Oatts, Rémi Bolduc, and John Hollenbeck.

 

“Always a compelling writer, capable of strong lyricism combined with harmonic invention and plenty of narrative twists and turns, Jensen’s music not only impresses on a first encounter, but reveals more with each and every listen.”—All About Jazz